By Meritrina Baute | Meritrina Baute
Since the declaration of "internal armed conflict", Ecuador faces complex scenarios. In addition to the security crisis caused by criminal gangs, the country experienced an energy crisis with scheduled power outages of up to 8 hours per day and a plebiscite for reforms in security, justice, investment and employment. However, significant challenges remain, especially in youth employability. Despite the Economic Efficiency and Employment Generation Law, which incentivizes youth hiring, 24.1% of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 are neither working nor studying, and the rate of inadequate employment reached 63%.
In this context, our initiatives are crucial in offering safe and preventive spaces for young people exposed to fear and the risk of being victimized or recruited by local gangs in neighborhoods such as Pisulí and La Roldós. During this period, we have served almost 150 young people, overcoming obstacles such as power outages or insecurity, without interrupting our services.
The Vocational Guidance Program has benefited more than 100 young participants, who in weekly workshops on Art (2 hours), Cooking and Trades explore skills and talents, trades or careers, calculate costs and profits of products; in monthly vocational workshops, for a whole day, they address real problems and learn about all the professions needed to solve them; and visit other environments such as the P&A law firm.
One of the workshops was with chef Jerome (http://www.chezjeromerestaurante.com/): "what struck me most was to see how they empowered themselves with the recipes and proposed innovations to change them, to the point of daring to make them".The most important dimension of our initiatives is to help young people understand that vocation and work are a function of the needs of society, they must be a good for the community, for others: the vocational workshops have always addressed the real needs of a family, the community or the Youth Center; and the participants of the cooking workshop organized a hamburger sale to help one of their classmates with knee problems.
Forty (40) young people are participating in vocational schools: 15 in Gastronomy, 11 young people in Technology and 14 young people in Mechanics. In human training, skills such as the development of "Critical Thinking", "Decision Making", "Communication" and "Interpersonal Relations" have been covered. In April, technical training was minimally affected by the power outages, but the young people have been very motivated to attend classes at sites (Universidad de Los Hemisferios, Universidad de Las Américas and Instituto Tecnoecuatoriano) that they would otherwise not have known.The Gastronomy and Mechanics students have already started their pre-professional internships, and soon the Technology students will start theirs.
With your support, we can continue "illuminating" the path of so many young people towards a better future, even in times of adversity and darkness.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
